Criminals are using international postal services and courier companies to deliver drugs across Greater Manchester. But police say they are disrupting the racket with multiple arrests and seizures of drugs and cash.

Mainly cannabis, but also cocaine, and prescription drugs are being sent from North America, Europe, and China to addresses in the region. The contraband is often secreted inside legitimate products like tools, even empty bottles of Prime drink.

As crooks try to reduce the risk of being caught by using parcel deliveries instead of street dealing the number of packages intercepted which were heading for Greater Manchester has risen from 1,500 to 4,500 in a year. GMP have made over 50 arrests.

Since GMP launched Operation Concept the Serious Organised Crime Group has made 53 arrests. This is in relation to the interception by UK Border Force of 20kgs of cocaine, 643kgs of cannabis, 11kgs of crystal meth, and 1kg of amphetamine that were destined for addresses across Greater Manchester.

Upon making the arrests and executing dozens of warrants the SOCG have recovered over £647,000 in cash, over 81kg of cannabis, a kilo of ketamine, a kilo of MDMA, and half a kilo of cocaine, as well as a number of air weapons

Detective Superintendent Joe Harrop said: "Operation Concept is GMP's approach to deal with an emerging threat in terms of volume. In essence it is people at various levels of criminality - individuals purchasing for personal use, up to organised crime groups, who from various countries are having parcels posted to the UK with a criminal commodity inside, which includes drugs, dangerous weapons, parts for firearms.

"In 97 percent of intercepted parcels it is drugs, and predominantly it is cannabis. There are Class A drugs as well. Working with border agencies parcels are being intercepted before they leave a country for the UK or at our borders by our Border Force.

"We have instances where they have been forwarded on to a UK address from a central parcel hub. We have had instances where a UK-based criminal is using the postal service to deliver drugs, especially with the emergence of online marketplaces for drugs and the dark web - that is occurring - but Concept is about international parcels coming in and being identified by Border Force.

"Nationally there has been a massive spike in this. I think it is an adaptation to police successes. If you are a criminal and you have a number of cannabis farms the chance of those being found or attacked by other organised criminals is fairly high plus you have all the outlay costs and infrastructure of farms.

"Having it imported is more attractive and drugs (cannabis) are legalised in some countries - like parts of the United States for example. They are purchasing it from a legal market but it is illegal to come into the UK. It is less risk, they think, of detection."

"GMP acts on intelligence sent from agencies regarding the intended destination of parcels.

"Greater Manchester is one of the major locations for the destination of these parcels. The North West seems to have more addresses than anywhere else.

"There is probably a perception that law enforcement is less likely to find you if you source drugs this way and there is less risk for an individual who just wants to get drugs for personal use. But clearly your Mr Big is not going to get 3 kilos delivered to his home address.

"This is where exploitation comes in - they will be paying a third party to accept the parcels on their behalf to avoid detection. There may be a financial incentive for someone to do it or there could be coercion.

"Also the parcel may be delivered to an address they are not connected to and they know what time a parcel is coming and they will intercept the delivery from your legitimate delivery driver. Or they might have a connection at one address on a street and they get it delivered to next door but one - knowing we all happily take in parcels for our neighbours.

"Some of the small amounts of drugs for personal use are coming in vacuum packs and it is just the drugs inside. The bigger quantities there is an element of concealment - hidden in air compressors, tools, all kinds of things."

Det Supt Harrop added: "We have made about 20 arrests in the last six months - which is a big increase, reflecting a big increase in the number of parcels heading for the Greater Manchester area. In 2022 there were about 1500 parcels coming into our area (from overseas), in 2023 it was almost 4,500.

"It might be that the host country identifies that they are about to ship controlled drugs to the UK - so they won't send it but will let us know. So then the drugs have never arrived but we have intelligence that this particular address or pseudonym or phone number was linked to a planned importation. Then we can do something proactive in relation to that.

"Also Border Force might intercept it when it comes into the country and we have then got that package evidentially which affords opportunities. We can work retrospectively and see what existing information we have on our systems on an address - have there been previous parcels that have got through? It could be that a high volume of parcels have been going there in the last 12 months."

Detective Supt Harrop added: "We are seeing a lot of cannabis coming in from North America, where it is legal to buy in some parts, and the Netherlands for the same reason. An emerging area is Thailand. China is more your prescription medication - and the threat of synthetic opioids.

"GMP has had a disproportionate number of parcels sent to its force area and the response is succeeding in tackling it."

Concerns about the threat posed by synthetic opiates have spiked with the arrival of nitazenes on the U.K's drug scene. Nitazenes are a group of synthetic opiate drugs which can be more potent than heroin, and their use is spreading across Europe and North America, the United Nations drug agency has warned. The synthetic opioids have been detected in the UK, US, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Belgium and Canada, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) wrote last month in its latest World Drug Report.

In April the government classified 15 types of nitazenes as Class A drugs, with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs warning they are highly addictive and pose a greater risk of overdose.

Nitazenes are being used to cut other drugs by dealers, and they have been linked to more than 100 deaths across the UK since last summer.

Drugs containing nitazenes were found in the home of Harry Durose, 21, who was found dead at his supported accommodation in Hyde, Tameside, on March 3, and it's suspected they were obtained through the post.

Greater Manchester Police is investigating whether Harry's death was linked to the deadly synthetic opioid, the M.E.N. understands, with officers awaiting the results of a post-mortem examination.

Harry's mother, Amy Durose, said she believed her son had unknowingly taken the drug after buying a substance - which he believed to be diazepam - on the black market.

Harry had previously been prescribed diazepam to treat a chronic condition called hypermobility - a condition in which joints are abnormally flexible, causing pain and stiffness - which he had suffered from throughout his life, she said.

Ms Durose said she believed her son would not have bought the drugs if he had known that they contained nitazene.

"They just posted it to him and nobody had any idea," said Ms Durose. "I just wish he had told me. He was very clued up on prescription drugs. If he had known these nitazenes existed, he would not have risked it."

In May, one heroin user, who spoke to the Manchester Evening News anonymously, said he believed nitazenes were already in circulation in the city and feared he had inadvertently taken it recently.

"It's in town now, " he said. "People 'round the gardens [Piccadilly Gardens] are worried about it because you can't tell until you've had it," he told us.

Nitazene was first developed in the 1950s, but never approved for sale. Its re-emergence has been put down to China's crackdown on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid estimated to have caused 75,000 deaths in the US in 2022, and problems with heroin supplies caused by the Taliban's ban on harvesting opium poppies in Afghanistan.